Why you shouldn't support legislation blocking internet porn

[Andrewjh]

Ed Vaizey and Claire Perry and a number of other politicians are trying to force ISPs to block adult content under the pretence of "think of the children", however this will have the opposite effect and could lead to children being exposed to far greater problems.

• Children these days are very tech savvy, especially with regard to the internet. And they need to be - the UK is the largest internet economy in the world. To succeed in the UK in the future, you'll need to know your way around a computer and around the internet from an early age.

• What happens when ISPs block sites is something called the Streisand Effect. Basically by banning it, they generate a huge amount of publicity and support for the sites. The Pirate Bay site last week got blocked in the UK, and it received traffic increases of 12 million users downloading millions of pounds worth of software, music, films and games. Blocking something increases its internet traffic, its exposure, and suddenly 30 times more people know about it than did before.

• What also happens when you block these sites is a huge amount of internet users figure out free and easy ways around the blocks. ISP's don't have the resources to stop this, and in most cases, it is impossible for them to do so. anyway. The Pirate Bay blocks can be got around within 20 seconds, and that is just googling "how do I get around pirate bay blocks".

• Many of the methods employed by users to get around the Pirate Bay blocks so they can illegally download files will also be posted as guides to get around porn blocks. These are accessible through any search engine (google, bing, yahoo).

• The problem is that tech savvy children (it only takes one to find out how from the internet or an older brother, then tell his friends, who tell their friends etc) can easily find out how to get around it. I mean it is as easily as it is to look up something for their homework, if not easier.

• The other more dangerous issue is that whilst once they've gone through those guides, they can easily find links to far darker sites which host horrific viruses, hackers, as well as references to drugs, drink and other adult content. They can also find links to anonymous chatrooms where they could meet anyone without you knowing.

• This is the danger that opt in and blocking poses. They will give you a sense of security when there is none.

• This is also based on the assumption that the block actually blocks all porn. They rarely ever do, and sites posing as sex education sites which don't get blocked get through with adult content. So you'll be under the illusion that the internet is safely blocked when it isn't.

Think of it like this. Imagine the internet is a cliff, and we are having a picnic at the top of the cliff. It's a mostly beautiful view, but if you let your guard down, you could fall off. You wouldn't let your child play near the edge. Installing the opt in system is like putting a strong looking but flimsy fence in place. You could be fooled in to thinking it was safe but left to their own devices your child, could easily fall through. We can't put a brick wall there otherwise it spoils the natural beauty of the view (the educational benefits of the internet).

So what to do? Firstly don't support legislation calling for blocks. It doesn't work, its been shown not to work in the past as well as more recently. Children can easily find a way around it, and in doing so find a far darker side of the internet.

Secondly: If you are concerned, use censoring software on your computer, but don't be content with just that. Use Browser tracking software like this - www.any-activity-monitor.com/free-browser-history-recorder.html so you can accurate tell what your child has been viewing, even if they delete it off the browser. There are also many simple, free and easy tutorials written online on how to better protect your computer and your child.

Thirdly: Take some time to talk to your child about internet use. It can be an amazing tool but it can be dangerous. They need to know that right and wrong, safe and risky, they all still apply online (something easy to forget I assure you). They'll avoid things if they know its wrong. They will be curious about things if its only blocked.

Lastly, don't be fooled by people using the "think of the children" line. It's an alarmist appeal to emotion. There is very little danger so long as you use your common sense and only allow a child a sensible amount of time on the internet. As a politics student, I have to question whether this has been saved up till now to gain support for the government after an miserable turn in recent polls.

Thanks very much for reading, I hope you'll consider your position.

Marie. I'm sure you do keep an eye out on your kids. Very much like myself since we're responsible parents.

But those who have parents who don't care. They won't be protected anyway. And if you have parents who really don't give a toss, I don't think a block on Internet porn is really the top of the list of things to worry about.

And that's the issue here isn't it. It's my job as a parent to protect my kids. The fear here is that by implementing a piss poor policy, it protects noone in reality and just creates the illusion of protection.

I understand that to the layman it all sounds very good and the temptation is to think that doing something is better than nothing. But in actual fact sometimes doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing.

How patronising you are. 'To the layman it all sounds very good' And who are you to presume people's technical knowledge?

"I know for example on my phone that my provider block all 'adult sites' which includes dating sites. I've been to Internet cafes which also block 'adult sites' such as single parent forums."

Oh yes. I know I tried to access a website with support for eating disorders/sexual assault on my mobile and it was blocked by the "adult content" filter, so I had to call up my provider for access. Sound like the kind of site that should be made harder to access? Or that people should have to pay extra to access?

I agree with you, Poulay. It is very patronising. Still, I guess an air of superiority makes people feel better about their nasty little porn habits and the damage that the internet porn industry does, both to those looking at it and those [unwillingly] taking part in it.

Ah, wondered how long that would take. So those of us against the porn block, despite having given you a whole host of valid technical reasons, are actually just dirty little porn users? And you thought niceguy was patronising.

That's the thing, Empusa. I do not think that all the technical reasons put forward are valid. If I didn't think it was possible to block porn, I wouldn't be on this thread.

I would presume that anybody who supports this plan doesn't have that much technical knowledge in this area. I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of, it's quite a specialist area. There are lots of areas of IT that I don't really understand - I don't feel patronised if somebody points out why what I'm trying to do won't work.

I'm anti-porn btw, but thanks for the slur.

I would presume that anybody who supports this plan doesn't have that much technical knowledge in this area.

Why on earth would you presume that?

The lack of technical reasons why it would work is a start.

Because there are very valid technical reasons why it won't work. Which of the technical reasons given on this thread and the others do you not think are valid?

Why on earth would you presume I have a 'nasty little porn habit' just because I can see the flaws in this idea?

Because it works here. If you want to view porn, you have to go to an awful lot of trouble to do so, ie 'opt in'. If it works here, it can work anywhere.

And we are pointing out that it probably blocks a whole load of other (non-porn) stuff.

Only explicit images. It does not block information. As I said earlier, I had no problems when researching reproduction or plastic surgery.

Oh really.. have a read of this

Poulay, I'm not presuming anything. It was Marie herself who said she doesn't have the technical knowledge and I was accepting what she said was true. The fact that she even knows what a VPN is puts her above your average parent in this country.

That said without meaning to blow my own trumpet, networking, firewalls and security is my area of expertise and I've been working in this area for well over a decade now. So I consider myself an expert in this area as do my friends and my employer.

And I'm not arguing about whether or not I want to surf porn. It's irrelevent. I can if so minded call my ISP up and ask them to lift it. I can if needed bypass any block imposed on me. Trust me, I do it many times when on customer sites and hotels etc. It's just a matter of how much time I want to devote to it.

I'm not even arguing whether porn is a good/bad thing.

What I am saying is this. The current proposals are not a good idea and has big downsides which your average parent will not understand.

Things blocked in Dubai include
"Some of these classification errors are particularly egregious, including categorization of the site of a small-town newspaper in Kentucky and the sites of several local churches as pornographic or sex-related."

Yep, that filter is accurate..

Empusa . Who bloody cares about a newspaper in Kentucky? Anyway, you always get things like this. When I worked in construction (In the UK), we had a problem with the word 'erection' in that we couldn't search for anything with that word in it. We had to have the word removed from the 'banned' list.

The point is that if it can block a newspaper in Kentucky because it wrongly believes it is pornography then what else can it block?

No, you are right, it also blocks sites about gambling, etc. but that wouldn't be the case in the UK, would it? Interesting link, though. For anybody wondering how they do it, this is how:

"The UAE has a wide-ranging filtering system that prevents its citizens from accessing an unusually high percentage of Internet content. UAE blocked more than 15% of the hand-chosen sites that we tested. The most extensive blocking occurs on topics such as pornography, gambling, religious conversion, English-language dating sites, and URLs in the Israeli top-level domain (.il). Much of this filtering is accomplished through fairly simple processes, such as using the SmartFilter blocking software to exclude certain topics or using a single method to block all content from the Israeli top-level domain.

Like its neighbor Saudi Arabia, UAE uses US-based Secure Computing's SmartFilter as a source of "black lists" and method of blocking access. SmartFilter classifies Web sites into different categories. Users of the software, such as UAE, can select which categories to block; this prevents Internet users from accessing any site in a blocked category. We determined that UAE blocks sites in the following SmartFilter categories: Cults / Occult, Drugs, Gambling, Obscene / Extreme, Nudity, Sex, Dating, Criminal Skills, and Anonymizer / Translator".

The point is that if it can block a newspaper in Kentucky because it wrongly believes it is pornography then what else can it block?

Who gives a shit? Seriously... Anyway, if you believe that a site has been banned in error, then it is very easy to have it unbanned (for everybody) by contacting the Ministry. Quite a few sites have been unbanned since I've lived here. It is a very simple process.

Not being funny but if your child is on the internet, they should be monitored, parental responsibility should come into play here, yes a child may get around said blocks if they were that desperate to look for it, but tbh most kids don't go on the internet looking for porn, they go on to play games, or for music, even then their parents should be in the same room and checking on them every now and then, surely its common sense to keep your kids protected from these sites by actively keeping an eye on them?

The obvious snag with that quotation about UAE (where is it from, BTW?) is that what it described isn't an effective block. There are tens of thousands of porn site, and not all will have obvious porny names, and they are agile.

Of course they should, GossipWitch. However, I imagine as they get older you need to be able to back off a bit. Which is why an 'Opt In' (or not) facility would be helpful. Sure, any bright teenager could eventually find something inappropriate, but at least it wouldn't be instantly available.

"Who gives a shit" about the ease with which a repressive regime such as UAE can arbitrarily block access to any website they wish is that it's censorship. That you can request - note, not insist - that a particular website is unblocked indicates the seriousness of the issue.

Let's say UAE decides to block mumsnet for its pornographic content (it does, after all, have thousands of posts that contain very explicit descriptions of sexual acts). A UAE serf resident hears that mumsnet is a good place to go for advice but discovers that it's been blocked. She doesn't know why it's been blocked. She doesn't know if the block is for a valid reason or because someone's cocked it up. She will be extremely reticent about requesting access to mumsnet because, for all she knows, it could have a hundred child-porn movies on every page and she'll end up on some kind of register.

Marie.

It sounds to me that you don't care if it works or not. As long as something is done then it's better than nothing. Correct?

Mumsnet was actually blacklisted last year. Everytime we went on it, my browser kept warning me it was listed as an attack site. Do you still not give a shit?

What about when Wikipedia was incorrectly blacklisted as distributing child porn by the WWF (not the panda charity).

Centralised blocking is a blunt tool which is ineffective and simply NOT the best way to protect children. If the government was indeed serious about it then they'd work with schools, companies and charities to promote blocking software which is free on home computers. Educate parents to sit with their child like I and many of us naturally do. That would be WAY more effective.

This is simply lazy policy making by politicians keen to score a quick media win regardless of its effectiveness or impact on the masses.

Like I said earlier. A chocolate fireguard would stop a child from instantly getting hurt. Doesn't mean it's a good idea though does it?